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Hawke's Bay Times, Volume 16, Issue 826, 27 September 1870, Page 3

The U.S. s.s. Ke?aca, now lying in Auckland harbor, is being daily visited by large numbers of people. The General Government have offered the agents of the s.?« Tararua £IOO to leave Melbourne within 15 hours after the arrival of the next Suez mail.

The Wairarapa Mercury gives the following a 3 a hint to dealers in horses: —At a sale at the Masterton pound on September 3, there were two horses sold, one realised £3, the other (branded HB) was knocked down for four shillings. The buyer of the latter sold it for £l, then it was re-sold for 30s, then .exchanged for a donkey valued at £5. The donkey was exchanged for a horse valued at £B. and the latter was " swapped " for another pony worth about £lO. AH these various changes were made -within a week. Another instance of the shrewdness of Masterton Jockies was iu the case of a horse purchased at au auction sale at Mr Brightwell's, Taratahi, where a gentleman purchased a horse for £6 ss, he sold him the same day for £B, the buyer exchauged it with the Maoris for four acres of land situated below Mr Masters' homestead, and for which he has since been offered £35. From these facts we may judge that if any of our readers wish to learn a " wrinkle " about horse-dealing, they may go to worse places than Masterton. The gentleman at Swindon whose doubts of the convexity of the globe took, a few months since, the courageous form of offering, by advertisement, to stake £SOO that the surface of water was perfectly level, appears to have come to conspicuous grief. Mr Wallace, the fellow-laborer of Darwin in the field of Natural Selection, seems to have taken the gentleman at his word, and to have afforded him liberal scope for the development of the new species of labor which his philosophic doubts had originated. He staked £SOO on the other side that he would demonstrate that the surface of water more or less curves according to circumstances. Each side paid their cheques into Messrs Coufcts' Bank on the Bth of last February, and Mr Wallace undertook before the 18th March "to prove the convexity and curvature, to and fro, of the surface of a canal, river, or lake by actual demonstration and measurement," to the satisfaction of two named and agreed umpires. This was, of course, easily and satisfactorily accomplished, the Bedford Canal being chosen for the survey on the sth March. The umpire accordin c l,' handed over the spoils of war to the victor This illustration of the uncertain issues of controversy seems to bo very bitter to the sceptic of Swindon, tor a pamplet issuing from that spot denounces the umpires and the man of science as cowards, slaves, blockheads, and tricksters. As Mr Wallace, h;is, however, so tasily and satisfactorily vindicated Newton, and transferred the cheque to his account, he will probably be satisfied to leave his opponent to digest his wrath. If every monomaniac weie willing to stake £SOO on his delu sion, men of science would have what our trans-Atlantic brethren call a good time |in refuting them, and loan sing would speedily prove itself better than " house and land,"

MODERN DESTROYERS. The San Francisco News Letter says : —" Captain Ericsson announces that he has perfected the system of submarine attack by which he can destroy the largest iron-clads ever built. The resistance is so great, that explosive projectiles have always proved failures hitherto when designed to strike below the water line. Captain Ericsson is confident that he has devised a projectile which will overcome the difficulty caused by this resistance. It is an elongated shell, charged with 300 lbs. of dynamite, and shot from a 15-inch gun at such an elevation as to enter the water near the water-line. It is fitted with a percussion cap, which explodes upon very slight impact against the hull, so that the velocity of the shell when it reaches its destination need not be high. The gun is carried on a swift armoured boat, protected by a turret. Captain Ericsson intends to make a formal offer to test this invention. He is ready to lit out, at his own cost and risk, a fast screw vessel with two 15-inch guns of the kind described, if somebody else will furnish the iron-clad to be experimented upon. In the politest terms he does this country the honor to single out the new British iron-clad ' Devastation' as one of the most spleudid specimens of an armoured war vessel which can be produced, and challenges her to come out and encounter his torpedo." The Broad Arrow says :—" With reference to the announcement in our last week's impression of a new method of attack invented by Captain Ericsson, of the United States, we hear that a far more powerful system of attack, the invention of an Engineer officer of the Koyal Navy, is now under the consideration of the English War Office authorities. Without entering into detail, it may be briefly stated that this system of attack consists in the use of an elongated shellshaped self-propelling torpedo, containing a bursting charge of from 400 to 10,000 pounds of gunpowder, gun cotton, or other explosive. It travels at, or 20ft. below, the surface of the water, as may be required, with a velocity of 140 to 500 or more feet per second, aud will range in aqua from 700 to 1,8 0 yards; and, paradoxical as it may appear, the striking velocity at extreme range may be double the initial velocity. Thus this " destroyer " may be so constructed as to have an initial of, say, 300 ft. per second, the speed may then fall to 100 ft. or 200 ft. per second, at which it may remain uniform for 10 or 20 seconds; it may then increase in velocity to 500 or more feet per second, should such increase be found to be desirable. The great advantage of this invention is that it can be as effectively used by the slowest as by the fastest vessels, or even by fixed forts and batteries facing the sea. The method of manufacture and mode of construction are for the present kept secret. The great objection to this invention is that it is absolutely and irresistibly destructive, as the combined fleets of the whole world could be destroyed in an hour by Mr Reed's ship ' Devastation,' now building at Portsmonth, if armed on the proposed system."